


Without Question

by snow_in_italian



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: M/M, callum perspective but mostly ben centric, i didnt really have a plan for this but i kinda went with it?, lots of un-dealt with issues surrounding phil and bens relationship, pre-warning: implications of emotional manipulation and alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snow_in_italian/pseuds/snow_in_italian
Summary: Phil is back. Ben is struggling. Callum is concerned with just how many bizarre events have become 'normal' in the Mitchell household.
Relationships: Ben Mitchell & Phil Mitchell, Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 86





	Without Question

Callum walks in on a screaming match.

A few months ago, he doubts this would have been a particularly unusual sound in the Mitchell household. Sharon and Denny, with the former unable to contain the teen’s anger. Ben and Louise bickering about everything and nothing, through sly jabs and snide remarks. Phil and anyone who dared look at him the wrong way. Ben and Phil, the latter taking cheap shots at his son’s insecurities. Ben and Lola, biting at each other over Lexi. Ben and Jay, squabbling like siblings over nothing of importance. Ben and- well. Ben.

But this was not a few months ago. Things had changed. Phil and Louise were long gone. Ben’s hearing aid sat disused on the bathroom windowsill. Sharon was at Ian’s and Denny was dead. Sure, there was the odd bit of lip from Lexi, but nothing more than the cheeky remark. What Callum had walked in on was vicious, engulfed in fury, and… almost entirely one sided.

“-just like that, ay? Turned against me without question? Should’ve known, really. I mean, why was I stupid enough to trust you to get the job done in the first place?” The voice was too familiar for comfort. Abrupt, with a naturally accusatorial tone. Phil.  
“I. Can’t. Hear. You.” From behind the door, where Callum had frozen in place, he heard Ben speak, quieter than the Mitchell patriarch. His voice was a little shaky, though Callum doubted it was knowingly so. He couldn’t help but notice the difference in how the younger man had begun speaking since the incident. He’d never draw attention to it, of course, would never let Ben know there was a difference. But it was there. 

Ben was, and always had been, a self-proclaimed shit talker. He remained so, but the sly, default tone he had relied on, since Callum had known him, was gone. No longer effortless. Ben seemed to take more care in trying to force his tone to maintain normality- and had lost it in doing so. Briefly, Callum thought of their calendar in the kitchen (made by Lexi at school), with the date of Ben’s cochlear implant operation circled in three rings of colour (an addition also made by Lexi, following Ben’s appointment letter). The thought was quickly cast away, as the shouting resumed, pulling Callum back to reality.

“Oh, of course. Always a drama with you, aint there?” The elder Mitchell scoffed. “Tell me, have you even been to see your brother? Denny is dead, but of course, you losing your fucking hearing aid takes priority.” Callum had heard enough.  
“If you would just stand fucking still for a minute, I can lip read!” Phil is about to shoot back some retort when Callum swings open the door. It takes Ben a moment to follow Phil’s eye line from where he leans on the table. Callum places a hand on his shoulder, partially to let him know who’s there, partially because he wants to drag Ben out of the house and to the Vic where they can pretend Phil doesn’t exist, and drink with Jay and Lola until the night grows dark. He resists the urge to do the latter of the two.

Callum is careful to turn Ben’s head towards him before he speaks. For Ben’s sake, he’s almost glad the younger man can’t hear the tone in which his father scoffs at the display.  
“You alright?” He circles Ben’s shoulder blades lightly, moving subtly forward so he’s closer to Phil than Ben is.  
“Yeah… yeah. I’m fine,” Ben’s gaze flicks back to Phil a little too quick for comfort.  
“Well, aint this cosy. What, me and Lou leave for a month, and suddenly you’re letting in the strays?” Callum ignores Phil’s comment. Instead, focussing on the way Ben’s brows draw together as he attempts to follow his father’s words.  
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here Phil.” Callum makes an effort not to be taken aback by his own retort. “And, if you’re gonna yell at him, at least keep your head still so he can understand you.”

“You don’t tell me where I can and can’t be in my own home.” Phil turns his attention from Ben towards Callum, and it sends a shiver down his spine. For a man approaching sixty, he does well to carry an essence of ‘I could beat you senseless before you knew what was coming’.  
“Oi, leave him alone dad, he aint part of this,” Ben’s tone is calmer than it had been, hushed, but firm.  
“I sure remember him being part of this when my own fucking flesh and blood had a barrel to my head!” Phil takes a step forward. As Ben goes to do the same, Callum intercepts, shoving Ben back as lightly as he can.

Silently, he makes a note to bring the whole ‘barrel to Phil’s head’ thing up later. In the lives of most people, threatening your father with a gun in east London would’ve been a significant occurrence. Then, he reminds himself of all the Mitchell dramas he’d seen and heard about in his two years on the square and figured a gun to the head was probably a common greeting by their standards of ‘family’.  
“Like I said, it’s probably not a good time for you to be here.”

Phil shakes his head, glaring at Callum as he does so, seemingly expecting him to back down. He doesn’t.  
“Pathetic.” He makes an effort to speak clearly, an act that should be out of fatherly love, but that leaves a sour taste in Callum’s mouth. “Hiding behind your pig of a boyfriend- you really know how to pick ‘em, ey son? One dead, one beats you into hospital, and now him? Good to know yo-” Phil doesn’t get to finish that sentence, as Ben launches at him, held back only by Callum who anticipates the move before Ben gets the chance to do something he’d regret. He’d gotten used to doing that, these past weeks.

“You say whatever the fuck you want about me, yeah? But you don’t get to stand there and say shit about him. You understand?” Callum wonders if Ben knows he’s screaming. He wouldn’t be surprised if the whole square could hear him.  
“I’ll say what I like when you choose him over your whole fucking family!”  
“I aint choosing him over my family, cause he aint making me chose. I’m choosing him over you, cause you’re the only one trying to make me choose!”

With a frantic jingle of keys, the front door swings open. Callum doesn’t go to move.  
“What the hell is goin’ on in ‘ere?” Jay’s voice sounds through the corridor and into the living room. Callum grabs Ben’s hand, knocking twice onto the palm. Following their first BSL course last week, they’d come up with tactile signs for the people they saw most frequent, realising it was going to take more than a few lessons to communicate fully. An L shape for Lexi, tapped twice on the palm. Two knocks for Jay. Two quick strokes of the index finger for Lola. A peace sign tapped once for Stuart, twice for Kathy, and three times for Ian- they’d lost interest and creativity rapidly in the formation of their language, finding other activities far more entertaining.

“I can hear you two mouthing off from the funeral p- Phil?” From the corner off his eye, Callum watches as Jay takes in the scene around him, a little uncertain of how to react.  
“We’ll finish this later,” Phil looks Ben up and down, clearly disgruntled by the new appearance.  
“Nah. We won’t,” Ben retorts, and Callum can’t help but feel a slight pang of pleasure in the words. 

As Phil heads towards the back door, the entire room appears to relax. Callum doesn’t have to look at Ben to know his shoulders drop, the furious expression that had been on his face dissipating. Jay grabs his shoulder.  
“What the hell was that about?” Jay paused for a moment. “You alright? Lo’s gonna be back from the school run any minute.”

Ben shrugged Jay’s hand away, hands reaching up and running through his hair. He let out a somewhat bitter laugh.  
“I… I need a fucking drink mate.” Ben doesn’t wait for any kind of response before stalking past, into the kitchen. “Why do we only have gin and tequila? Who the fuck does the shopping in this house?”

Callum didn’t think it was the best time to remind Ben that he’d already consumed all of the cans they’d bought for the weekend. There was a time and place, and that certainly wasn’t after his on-the-run father had shown up out of the blue to berate him for not properly killing the ex-fiancé of his sister. Especially not when Callum walked into the kitchen to find Ben had already begun measuring out, and downing, a shot of tequila, his face twisting as he did so.  
“Never did like the stuff.” In spite of this, he began pouring a second measure. 

Callum slid his arm around Ben’s waist, moving his head by the chin to get his attention. Whatever was left of angry, frustrated Ben, screaming at the top of his voice, and launching at his father, was gone. Instead, replaced by a tired Ben, bags around his eyes, expression holding no pretence of forced contentment. It was a part of Ben that Callum knew few had seen, and that the majority that few had lived under this roof at one point or another. Most knew him as the furious Ben, desperate to be a Mitchell protégé. Some knew him as the snarky, but emotionally compromised son of a vindictive man who was trying to be better than the last. Few knew him as he was now, exhausted and vulnerable. Callum had known him as all three, but this was the Ben he knew how to handle the least. The Ben that looked lost and conflicted, the Ben that filled himself with self-hatred and pity. The Ben that was so easily demolished by Phil, and often struggled to pull himself out of bed in the morning. 

“That’s not gonna help.” Callum said, though that wasn’t quite why he’d came into the room.  
“Oooh, agree to disagree on that one.” Ben threw back the fluid like it was nothing. Callum had seen him drink worse. He recalled a particularly rough night less that a year previous, in e20, when Callum and Whit had walked into the bar, fingers laced together. Callum had watched as Ben had noticed their presence, ordered and downed six shots of whatever was strongest, before heading off with the closest willing participant. He cringed a little at the memory.

“Ben.” He turned Ben’s head again, with more care than before. Ben rolled his eyes, but didn’t object. “Are you okay?”  
“I’m fine, Callum. Just fantastic.” He reached for the bottle again, but Callum was faster, manoeuvring up to place it on a shelf just out of (Ben’s) arms reach. “Well that’s just unfair, babe.”

“What happened?” Callum rests his weight against the counter, waiting for Ben to respond. In the other room, Jay pottered around, seemingly resetting whatever damage Phil had done to the contents of the sitting room.

“Oh, you know, the usual Mitchell reunion. He shows up, unannounced, at the kitchen table when I come in to get a cuppa, starts shouting his head off about this and that, not listening to the fact that I can’t fucking hear ‘im. I mean, it’s funny, really. He’d been here ‘bout 20 minutes before you showed up, I aint got the slightest what he was yabbering on about half the time!” He sees Ben sneak a glance at the bottle, but seemingly decides it’s not worth the humiliation of having to climb on the countertop to reach it. “Though, I mean, I can guess. The usual, you know. _'Never could get anything right, could ‘ya?' 'Not even asked about your sister, have you?' 'Suppose you haven’t done anything to correct the mess you’ve made?' And that ‘friend’ of yours._ I mean _‘friend’_ Cal? That part I fucking saw him say. It’s been fucking years, and fucking _‘friend’_. Like he doesn’t fucking know? Or doesn’t know your fucking name- I mean, he used to do the same with Paul, too. _‘Friend’_ or the _‘flouncy one’_ that’s what he fucking used to call him, even when he died! That’s how he fucking told me, my _‘friend’_ was dead and- and I just-”

Callum moved forward, wrapping arms around the younger man, and burying his face into the top of his head. Ben had a habit of doing this. He stopped himself from sharing so much, that when he let out a little, it all tended to just come flooding like a tidal wave, only Ben was still in armbands. Ben wasn’t crying. Callum had found that crying was not something Ben allowed for himself when there was a chance anyone else would see him, and Jay was only in the other room. His breaths were shallow, shaking slightly under Callum’s embrace. It took him a minute to return the gesture, eventually melting into Callum, both of their weights pressed into the kitchen counter.

“I just… why can’t we have normal families? You know, the type of dad’s who’s first instinct is to ask how you are when they’ve not seen you for weeks, not to have a go about you not hiring a decent hitman?” Ben chuckles a little as he spoke, a small comfort given the situation.

Callum made a point to lean back before he spoke again, choosing first to stand in the embrace for a moment.  
“What did he mean ‘held a barrel to my head’? You didn’t actually, right? I mean, this is London, not Texas.” Callum didn’t quite anticipate the confirming nod Ben returned. “You have a fucking gun? What if Lexi finds it, Ben?”  
“Correction, I had a gun. It’s probably somewhere in the Thames now,” there was a forced nonchalant tone to Ben’s voice, the tone he’d used back before Christmas, while trying to convince Callum that work was the reason he was stressed, rather than the family murder plot he was involved in. “And I’m not stupid, Cal. I kept it at the car lot, well away from Lexi.”

In spite of himself, Callum was unable to stifle a laugh at the pure bizarreness of the situation.  
“’Ey, I warned you from the start, the Mitchell’s love a little drama.” Ben flinched a little at his own words, as though he was forcing himself to make light of a situation he didn’t particularly enjoy. “You not curious why?”  
“Go on then, enlighten me,” Callum decided he could go along with Ben’s charade of suddenly being fine for now, if it meant Ben had distraction. Even if temporary.  
“Keanu was the only one who knew where you were. And dad had a gun-”  
“Okay, I’ve gotta ask, how many guns do you all own?” Ben’s smile was a slightly unsettling response. 

“-A gun pointed at his head. He thought your sorry mug was a lost cause. I told him he either puts the gun down till we find you, or I shoot.”  
“Just like that?”  
“No question about it.”  
“Ah, that’s both sweet and creepy.”  
“That’s where I live, as you well know.”

Callum is about to lean down into a kiss when the front door swings open with a distinct bang. Grabbing Ben’s palm, he signs an ‘L’ twice, and gives two strokes of the index finger.  
“Perfect timing, as always,” Ben mutters, rolling up on the balls of his feet to kiss Callum’s cheek, before pushing himself off the countertop, and into the hallway, as Callum followed in toe.

Lola stands in the doorway, slipping off her shoes, while Lexi babbles on about the _fight she had with Masie in her year, who’s far too stupid_ (Lola scolds her lightly) _to dare make fun of Lexi for failing the spelling test_. The (second) youngest of the Mitchell clan briefly greets them all, before running upstairs to change from her uniform so she can go on her bike with Mia and Bailey. 

Cautiously, Lola watches her go, a feigned calm expression on her face. She doesn’t speak until she hears the slam of her daughter’s bedroom door, and when she does, it’s a panicked hiss more than anything else:  
“Did I just see Phil walking round the back of the square?”

**Author's Note:**

> so I'll be honest I'm not 100% certain what this is, but I quite enjoyed writing it so yeah... sorry if this isn't really in character, i've never actually written ee before, or actually anything beyond my own oc's so this isn't my usual but i might try and write more? potentially? i've got a long corona lockdown ahead so might as well


End file.
